First Impressions

[Kurtbob]

I have finished one game and I am currently playing another.

First game: Byzantium. King. One City Challenge. Small continents map. Culture victory. First game was ok. I really shouldn't have played one city challenge but I wanted to see if my usual game style (culture victory) changed dramatically with the expansion. It played out pretty well, but a boring game.

Now the SECOND game. I am loving it!

Second game. Dutch. King. Standard Earth map.

Started the game in the Amazon with two gems, three truffles (in Jungle), Spices, One banana, and Wine. Found the third parthenon and took Sacred Path. Culture up the wazoo. Currently (I just entered the modern era) I have roughly a dozen jungle tiles around my capital. Most are next to rivers and three have truffles. With a trading post they produce 2 food, 1 culture, 2 science, and three gold (four on a river, five if a truffle with a plantation) each. I produce 250+ gold a turn (trading posts + finishing mercantilism is OP but I'm loving it all the same!).

I have conquered all of South America, North America, and Europe (defeating three civs and three city states). I have settled South Africa and Australia. Still in the happiness green (though barely).

The new melee naval units are amazing. Sea beggers + frigates = unstoppable. I have earned roughly 4 great admirals this game. I conquered the middle of North America by entering the great lakes via the atlantic after capturing a CS. Very cool.

Something unheard of happened this game. The Incan Capital was captured by the city state Lahsa. Unbelievable.

Wish I was home to post some pics.
So far, G&K is great. I love all the features, especially the expansion of the AIs naval prowess.

 

[PhilBowles]

Something unheard of happened this game. The Incan Capital was captured by the city state Lahsa. Unbelievable.

Wish I was home to post some pics.
So far, G&K is great. I love all the features, especially the expansion of the AIs naval prowess.

Just played the start of a multiplayer game with someone who doesn't have the expansion, and not seeing the faith icon in the resource bar already seems weird... And I had a great start for teching to Petra until I remembered...

I did come across all the old CSes and realised I hadn't seen those names in G&K - Lhasa included. For some reason, my experience has been that CSes are much less aggressive now than they were in vanilla - I did once see Mecca captured by Sydney in vanilla, but that was after I'd taken out its defences.

 

[Buccaneer]

One of my fears was that combat would drag out to a stalemate. I am finding, after eliminating three civs on my continents, that it is nicely balanced between taking longer to kill/capture vs. taking longer to being killed.

 

[YouMust]

I love the xpack. Austria is amazing. The only thing I don't like is the fact that I could run civ v perfect, but I can't get past five turns without having to change the map to strategic view

 

[Kurtbob]

One of my fears was that combat would drag out to a stalemate. I am finding, after eliminating three civs on my continents, that it is nicely balanced between taking longer to kill/capture vs. taking longer to being killed.

I agree. I've seen many people on these forums bringing up the "invincibility" of cities and losing outright to the AI, but I REALLY like the flow of combat and conquest now. AI cities don't just topple over, some planning is actually involved. Capturing a city is far more satisfying now. Loving this expansion.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

A little advice for everyone, don't ever pick yourreligious beliefs when you're in the heat of battle-or else you leave yourself with a belief wbich is utterly useless outside of war ;-). Wish the Reformation policy allowed you to change one of your non-founder beliefs (follower or enhancer belief).

 

[StrideColossus]

Played pretty much all weekend (with breaks for beer and football), first with the Byzantians for a cultural game and half-way through another with Carthage - my impressions:

Religion

Really nice addition to the game adding a lot of flavour and some tough decision making. My only criticism is that religion doesn't seem to have much influence on diplomatic relations, or at least I never saw any modifiers or AI actions caused by religious differences or alliances.

Espionage

I know this isn't to everyones taste but I actually quite like this feature: yes there's not that many things you can do with it (hopefully future updates will add further actions), but being able to fiddle with CS relations is neat, the intrigue element is fun, and I like the word "shenanigans".

CS changes

For me this is the best change in G&K and makes the diplomatic win less of a pay-to-win victory condition than previously (personally I used to turn that VC off because it was so crap). In vanilla the CS mechanic was pretty dull, unless you lucked out with a quest it was usually just wait until you have loadsa gold then buy them all out. Now with multiple and more 'logical' quests the CS make a difference to my goals in the game.

Improved AI

I've definitely seen a marked improvement in the AI combat - in my first game I was pissing off Carthage and they attacked, but not with the usual ragtag approach but a co-ordinated front! A line of pikes and swordsmen, backed up by ranged units strategically located, and seige units coming up the back. First time I've been really impressed by the AI, I had to beat a hasty retreat and only just fended off their attack.

Combat

The change to 100HP is a welcome one, and the fact that archery now has a viable promotion tree of it's own means that protecting experienced archery units is much more importent which adds another dimension to the game.

I think everyone agrees that the changes to make cities much stronger in defence is good (rather than just rushing a handful of roughly contemporary units), however personally I think it's a little too hard now to take cities. Unless you're a least one era in advance of your enemy it's virtually impossible now without suiciding an entire army, or at least that's my experience.

New civs

Byzantium - Was looking forward to trying this lot out along with the new religion mechanic and really enjoyed playing this game. Running the dominant religion in the world can reap huge rewards , and using inquisitors and GP to crush the heathen is fun. Cataphracts are also a great UU, didn't really get to try the Dromon though.

Carthage - The free harbours (once you've got the Wheel) is very powerful meaning you're swimming in gold early doors, and is even more potent if you take the +science from trade routes belief since you'll certainly have routes up before anyone else. The elephants are fun and the ability to cross mountains is interesting if situational. I'm struggling with the Quinquereme though - it's supposed to be used to attack cities, but even in the ancient era they are getting virtually one-shotted by weak cities (even without garrisons) and by enemy Triremes. Am I missing something? Other than the fact that they are cheap to produce they seem weak.

Criticisms

Maintaining happiness does seem to be too easy now.

I've been experiencing a lot of visual bugs, particularly as the game advances into the middle eras:

• invisible units.
• city view screen not updating when I'm micro-managing specialists (have to keep opening and closing it).
• city screen getting 'confused' when switching cities using the left/right arrows, again have to open/close it.
• notifications for resources that cities demand/receive appearing every turn.

Not huge problems but slightly annoying. Anyone else getting similar?

Summary

Overall I think G&K is a great expansion bringing a host of much-needed changes to the game and is well worth the price tag. There are inevitably quite a few bugs and balancing tweaks needed, but this has certainly meant that I'll be playing just-one-more-turn for quite some time.

 

[Vatras]

@Stridecolossus:
I got a graphics glitch, where I could see only the clouds and the land was covered in a single color beneath. Sometimes zooming helped, mostly not, so i had to switch to strategic often. I finally found that the problem came from a mod I used (CS diplomacy), and after ditching it, it disappeared.

 

[PhilBowles]

Played pretty much all weekend (with breaks for beer and football), first with the Byzantians for a cultural game and half-way through another with Carthage - my impressions:

Religion

Really nice addition to the game adding a lot of flavour and some tough decision making. My only criticism is that religion doesn't seem to have much influence on diplomatic relations, or at least I never saw any modifiers or AI actions caused by religious differences or alliances.

It may have a strong positive effect - I don't know if it was the reason my alliance with Genghis lasted the entirety of one game, but we did have the shared religion modifier. The trick is that this only comes into effect with civs where a majority of their cities share your religion.

My main conflict in that game was a religious conflict; the first big negative I got with Siam was trying to convert their cities while they were spreading their own religion.

I think everyone agrees that the changes to make cities much stronger in defence is good (rather than just rushing a handful of roughly contemporary units), however personally I think it's a little too hard now to take cities. Unless you're a least one era in advance of your enemy it's virtually impossible now without suiciding an entire army, or at least that's my experience.

That was my feeling initially, but it may be that much of it's down to a greater effect of defensive placement - it took me forever to knock out Attila's Court in one game where it was mostly surrounded by forests, but I had a much easier time taking cities, capitals included, in subsequent games (albeit with obliging Mongol allies to act as cannon fodder).

New civs

Byzantium - Was looking forward to trying this lot out along with the new religion mechanic and really enjoyed playing this game. Running the dominant religion in the world can reap huge rewards ,

Can you elaborate on that?

Criticisms

Maintaining happiness does seem to be too easy now.

I found that that wasn't the case in the late game, but that may just be because it seemed easy in the early game so I neglected the usual happiness buildings, luxuries and relations with mercantile states (who in the late game may be providing close to 20 happiness to their allies with their extra resources as well as the CS benefit).

[*]notifications for resources that cities demand/receive appearing every turn.
[/LIST]Not huge problems but slightly annoying. Anyone else getting similar?

Not this one, but I have had cases where I've had multiple simultaneous notifications about a civ protecting the same CS, and repeated "Your city has converted to another religion" notifications when there's been no change in its dominant religion.

I just started a new game as Korea, to see how the mechanics play with older civs that haven't been buffed/changed. Trying to get faith based on shrines alone is a struggle (I've only played Maya and Ethiopia of the expansion civs) - I have Geneva (religious) as my closest city-state, and worked to get friendship with them, as well as pledging to protect them to boost my standing. Unfortunately I then got Attila "apologising" for bullying the CS while a bunch of battering rams were marching in my direction (seems Geneva isn't the only one he's bullying), much earlier in the game than I've seen him use them before - and "You will pay for this" didn't seem the option most likely to guarantee my survival. It's a great touch that choosing the other option counts as a broken promise and loses CS influence.

 

[StrideColossus]

@PhilBowles

Can you elaborate on that?

At work atm so can't remember which particular beliefs I was hinting at, but I do remember I was bringing in a shed load of cash and faith (or maybe culture, can't remember which) and wasn't really doing anything actively to get it , the religion was 'spreading itself' as I had the +whatever% enhanced belief as well. Ker-ching.

 

[Brichals]

@PhilBowles



At work atm so can't remember which particular beliefs I was hinting at, but I do remember I was bringing in a shed load of cash and faith (or maybe culture, can't remember which) and wasn't really doing anything actively to get it , the religion was 'spreading itself' as I had the +whatever% enhanced belief as well. Ker-ching.

I was surprised to see that for the bonus belief Theodora gets to choose any of the founder or pantheon beliefs not already taken. And the pantheon beliefs are really good, or at least there are many of them to optimise your religion. It makes the UA really good.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Religion

Really nice addition to the game adding a lot of flavour and some tough decision making. My only criticism is that religion doesn't seem to have much influence on diplomatic relations, or at least I never saw any modifiers or AI actions caused by religious differences or alliances.

That's not been my impression so far. Attila went from being at War with me to being Friendly towards me in the space of less than 1000 years (maybe 20 turns or so), based solely on my religion being in the *majority* of his cities. This makes it immediately better than the Civ4 system where you could become best buddies with a Civ just because you adopted his State Religion-even if you did nothing else after that! I'd still like to see a situation where you could adopt an AI's religion for a big, one time boost in relations-but then have to actively spread it in order to retain *any* kind of positive modifier! Just a thought.

Aussie.

 

[tirnaog]

Am currently playing my two first games.
Celts and America.
Huge map, 22 civs, 41 CSs. 3Billion yrs old, Raging Barbs, complete kills.

Really liking it. The Spy system is actualy fun, but I have a question. How/When do you get a second spy? My first one is at lvl3 and is doing great. but his on homeguard protection duty.
Would really like a 2nd one to send out on missions.

I would also like on the screen when your talking with a civ if it would show you your relationships with other civs at that time. I hate making a DOF and then finding out I pissed off a friendly civ because of it.

Deasun.

 

[Brichals]

^^ You get a new spy per era up to 5 in the end. So your next will be in the industrial era.

 

[Mustakrakish]

After my first "trial" game as celts, which turned out to be a drag where I tried to experience everything (naturally a mistake), started my second game as Sweden and focused on science... and found my favorite civ Love them. Like the Carolean & Hakka Peliitta duo, was very fun to fend off the Japanese and then some with them. Before release I among many others was wondering why the hell would I gift my Great people to CS. Now it's turning out to be my favorite ability. With 3-4 DoF bonuses I was cranking up Great people like never before and with new CS mechanic, I'd be gladly giving away great artist's, great merchants and GG that I was getting form Japanese attacks.

Being able to maintain military might due to solid tech lead and never declaring war (one DoW is all that needed for half the world to hate you really), was able to seriously befriend 3 strongest nations, two of them warlike (Celts and Hunns) and reap the benefits of the Nobel ability. Espionage went much better this time too, got upgraded my Special Agents due to everyone lusting for that piece of Swedish... tech. And wasn't so reliable on CS so...

Funny thing, was allied to La Venta whole game, it had a bad luck of being between me and Attila. I had pledged protection over it, yet Attila bullied them regularly like clockwork, and everytime I was forced to say to him "Oh, u... prankster" due to "protection" everytime. Which didn't really affect our friendship at all. It continued throughout the game... poor La Venta.

 

[Putmalk]

Huge map, 22 civs, 41 CSs. 3Billion yrs old, Raging Barbs, complete kills.

Wow, how does your computer handle that? How slow are turn times late game? O_O

 

[blackcatatonic]

So I finally gave up on my first game (Boudicca, King, Standard Arborea Continents, against all other female leaders), which, despite going very badly - behind all Civs tech-wise except one, and Austria's already in Atomic (I'm in Industrial) - has been a lot of fun, so much so that I might go back to it at some point just to see who eventually wins and how they do it. I decided to press ahead with the Prince version which I'd already started. The first 150 turns were boring as hell - the AI didn't expand and nothing happened.

Elizabeth, my only neighbour on the continent, finally declared war, so I went north with some Pictish Warriors, a Knight, a Swordsman, a Composite Archer and a couple of Catapults. Nottingham had Sri Pada in its borders, which I had my eye on, and there were a couple of nice little hills just to the south which looked perfect for setting up my siege weapons.

...That was until I remembered that city attacks can make mincemeat of units now. I lost one of my poor Catapults shortly after setting it up - it only took the city and an Archer to finish it off. Luckily I managed to take the city with only more loss - a Pictish Warrior - and then the AI brought out a couple of embarked Swordsmen out of nowhere and took it back. I was very impressed. And then I took the city (again).

At this point I've just taken York, thanks to my Catapults becoming Trebuchets and a couple of Hwachas from Budapest. Hwachas need to be nerfed. They're insane. London won't last very long...

I caught the Austrians spying on me! Maria Theresa didn't look remotely bothered, but I forgave her in the interests of scoring some brownie points with my nearest rival. Having seen her in two games now I can confirm that she is an absolute beast, and seems to be very aggressive to boot - she's been involved in wars with pretty much everyone else except me. Although Cathy tells me she's plotting against me, so we'll see what happens there.

The best thing I learned in my now-abandoned King game is that Gatling Guns are awesome.

 

[bryanw1995]

My big issue is it seems that cities are now impossible to take without siege units.
Infantry doesn't make a dent.

As they should be.

When was the last time you heard light infantry taking a well-defended strong point without artillery?

Catapults are easy to get and they don't require iron any more. My only issue with them needing them is that they're so easy to kill now that cities actually fight at full strength and the artillery units are properly designed as city-busters rather than unit-rapers. As Marty mentioned earlier, cover is actually extremely useful now for catapults.

I'd appreciate if the infantry had a use aside from making a wall between the enemy and the siege
units.

You can build statue of Zeus and promote your infantry with the +50% vs city promotion, then they are at least decent. I think that I'll try out a small pangea immortal game with 11 civs and go honor just to see how well this strategy works... Let's see, a cat at +200% has a city bombard value of 24, a swordsman with Statue of Zeus and city raider has a city attack value of 14 x (1.65) = 23.1. Throw in morale and discipline for fun and that swordsman is much better than a cat vs cities. You can still us infantry against cities, you just have to plan it better than in the past. Heck, I used a couple of catapults and a lot of Cataphracts to dominate an emperor game the other day. The horses did most of the work, most cities I just popped with a couple of the catapults for one turn and turn and then swarmed with the Cataphracts. Ugh, say "catapult Cataphract" 5 times fast, it's hard even to type it...

 

[Mustakrakish]

I keep hearing about those infamous cities that one-shot siege weaponry and else, but I'm confused, never happened to me I mean I'm taking cities just fine and no one gets one-shotted. Units get "concentrate fired" to death, but that's fair and normal. Don't mean to sound smug, but you sure you're placing them right?

 

[smallfish]

If that Carthage city is located on a hill flanked by three mountain ranges... yeah, not a good idea to just rely on cats and trebs. Heck, even cannons won't do the trick.

You'll need artillery and bombers.